Five Fixes for Freeze Panes Not Working in Excel

Freezing panes in Excel can help you get a clearer overview of vast datasets. However, there are some limits to the feature. In some cases, you might not get the option to freeze panes, which can be frustrating if you’re working on huge tables and don’t see why it might be happening.

Here are some of the most common fixes for freeze panes not working in Excel.

Fix 1. Check If You Already Have Frozen Panes

The first, and perhaps most obvious fix, is to check if you’re already using the Freeze Panes or the Split feature. They work similar to one another, but are mutually exclusive. However, in newer Excel versions, using Freeze Panes overwrites the Split.

Step 1. Open the workbook you’re trying to freeze panes for.

Step 2. Go to the “View” tab and click on the “Freeze Panes” feature to open the menu.

Step 3. In this case, you can see that there’s an option to “Unfreeze Panes.” Clicking on it will remove the frozen panes and allow you to freeze new ones.

Step 4. You can now select a cell to start freezing from and use the Freeze Panes feature again.

Fix 2. Check for Hidden Rows

Let’s take a simple example. We have a dataset that is seemingly empty, but going to the Freeze Panes menu shows that there are already frozen rows.

What happened here? Well, as you might notice, there’s a hidden row 1 in the sheet, which is likely the frozen row as well.

Step 1. Bring the cursor between the row headers for the all cells and row 2. It will change to two lines with arrows going both up and down.

Step 2. Right-click and select “Unhide.”

Step 3. Go to the Freeze Panes menu and select “Unfreeze Panes.”

You’ll now be able to see the previously-frozen first row and can use the Freeze Panes command as usual.

Fix 3. Change the View from Page Layout to Default

If you’re using a view other than the Default one (Normal), then the Freeze Panes option is likely going to be disabled entirely.

Luckily, this has an easy fix.

Step 1. Go to the “View” tab and select “Normal” in the “Workbook Views” section.

Step 2. You can now freeze and unfreeze panes again.

Fix 4. Unprotect the Sheet

If you’ve been sent the sheet by someone else, they might’ve protected it from changing the view or freezing panes. If other features besides freeze panes are not working, sheet protection is likely the main culprit. You’ll need to unprotect the sheet to make it usable.

Step 1. Go to the Review tab. In newer versions of Excel, you’ll see that the sheet is protected if you get a direct “Unprotect Sheet” option in the “Protect” section.

Step 2. Click on “Unprotect Sheet.”

Step 3. Enter the password. You can ask the person who protected (or made) the sheet to provide it for you.

Step 4. Click on OK.

The Freeze Panes option should be working now. If you don’t know the password, you can use one of the few workarounds. You can use Google Sheets to import the sheet and then export it to a new file, which removes protection but leaves the data intact.

Fix 5. Remove Macros

In some cases, you may have inadvertently created a macro that unfreezes panes alongside whatever it was supposed to do. Whenever you run it, it will keep unfreezing your panes, making it seem like the feature doesn’t work. You’ll need to check and edit macros to fix this.

Step 1. Go to the View tab and select Macros. Note that you’ll need to enable the Developer tab to enable Macros in the first place.

Step 2. In the list of Macros, select the first macro and click on “Edit.”

Step 3. In the VBA window, you’ll get the entire code for the Macro. Check any lines that contain “ActiveWindow.FreezePanes = False” and remove them from the code.

Step 4. Click on the Save icon on the top left (or use “Ctrl S”).

Step 5. Repeat the process for every macro to ensure you don’t have unnecessary code.

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